Oh my, it's May. The good ship Weather is finally tacking us into the middle of the great sea of spring. The flowers are taking the stage, each to the applause of all onlookers. Side note: If it is the result of global warming that has given us this year’s unusually vernal feel, I can't say that it bothers me. For a polar bear up to his woolly kneecaps in artic water as his iceberg boat dematerializes and swamps around him, not so good.

I have gotten into the swing of things by getting up at 5 a.m. to take my pooch on a walk to the beach. It has been glorious. The four-mile wake-up walkabout seems to be an energizer that surprisingly gives me energy for the rest of the day. Never underestimate the numerous benefits of putting one foot in front of the other for 30 minutes to an hour each day. It's one of the most potent, inexpensive spring elixirs there is. If you start walking and keep at it, I guarantee it will become something you look forward to each day.

While walking the other day I jogged my memory about a character whose name I run across with regularity while I pore over this paper's early editions trying to cull out interesting tidbits for our Early Files section.

Without a doubt one of the strangest and most colorful characters of Cape Cod's past was a gentleman named Barney Gould. Born in Chatham in 1818 he died in Chatham's poorhouse in 1895. During those nearly eight decades, the sight of the small man pushing a cart and carrying a large pack on his back on streets and thoroughfares across America was a familiar occurrence.

This paper described him thus: "Barney had a Egyptian mummy like visage that rarely changed. He was small in stature, slight in build, but possessed a great toughness of fiber and muscle; deficient intellect, but still of a nature that makes him exceedingly sharp and witty, and in repartee he is hard to make a point on."

Gould’s biggest attribute was his ability to walk. In fact, it was generally thought he had traveled more miles on foot than any man living.

The reason for Gould's pedestrian nature was his business, Gould's Express, which was centered for 30 years in Hyannis. To show his patriotism, Gould would dress up in a bright military officer's uniform and carry a US flag that had Gould's Express stitched across it.

For three cents Gould would deliver a letter to anybody, anywhere. That's anywhere from here to Santuit or perhaps Washington D.C, or Ohio. He brought an important letter from New York to Barnstable in three and a half days and only charged a nickel.

He made two trips to California. The first trip was to deliver a package he charged three dollars to take. It took him 75 days to get there averaging more than 40 miles a day on the 3,000-mile stroll. It took him longer coming home because he said he looked at things he was walking by that time.

He kept most of his delivery work local as he got older. He had established a daily delivery route from Hyannis to Osterville via Centerville. He carried in his hand-cart a large, heavy sofa. He charged the recipient of the furniture 25 cents. Not bad for pushing and pulling his cart 28 miles round trip.

He claimed he was faster than the trains. He took a bet with one of the conductors of the Hyannis to Boston run that he could beat them on their trip. Sure enough when the train pulled into South Station there was Barney walking down the platform to greet the conductor and collect his bet. With a wink of an eye to the engineer, his secret of holding on to the locomotive's cowcatcher for the 70-mile ride was kept a secret.

Barney and his second wife, who was a Wampanoag, lived in the "Happy Hollow" section of Hyannis until they got late in their years. It was decided by both Barnstable and Chatham officials that they would be better off living in the almshouse in Chatham for the rest of their lives. When Barney and his wife found out the reason for the sheriff’s visit, they both took off into the woods before being caught. After what was described as a decent fight, they consented to leave Hyannis and go to Chatham.

After Gould's death, his wife would sometime sneak away from the Chatham poor house and make it back to her shack in the "Hollow," her reason being that she much preferred “the free air of Hyannis to the confinement of a small town like Chatham."